Blog Post

VNC Server is the software used to do VNC (Virtual Network Computing) desktops on Linux environments. If you use the Windows Operating System, you only have to activate Remote Desktop. But on Linux, you have to install VNC Server so you can do remote desktop in real-time.

There is much software for VNC servers, but in this article, we will only discuss how to install VNC servers using TigerVNC. For information about TigerVNC, you can directly visit the official site on the page https://tigervnc.org/.

Preparation

To follow this article, you must prepare an Ubuntu 18.04 server that can be remote via SSH or directly from the terminal on the screen. An adequate internet connection is needed to download the software.

For VNC clients from your computer. You can use the VNC Viewer application, for example, RealVNC. Please download the app and install it on your computer. You can get the RealVNC Viewer download page at VNC Viewer Download.

In this experiment, we used a Dedicated Server with Ubuntu 18.04.1 (Bionic Beaver) OS that was accessed using SSH with a local connection.

Install VNC Server

System Update

Before we continue the installation, make sure your server has been updated to the latest version.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

If there is an update, you should restart your server so that you can boot with the latest application.

sudo reboot

Install Tiger VNC

After server up again, install the required packages, then install TigerVNC.

Start VNC Server

The above option will create a session that allows connections from outside with 800 × 600-pixel resolution and sharpness 24. You can configure the resolution and sharpness according to your taste.

Start Stop Script

To make it easier, we will create a script to start the VNC server service. Also, with this script, we can make autostart VNC servers when the computer is turned on. Create a file with the name vncserver@.service in the /etc/systemd/system folder. Use the nano command.